Reviewing the Mail: Week of December 28th

Last week in this space, I wrote about the one book that made it to me, fighting the Christmas hordes and the existential ennui of the book-publishing world, and predicted that this week I wouldn't have any books at all to write about.

Well, I was wrong about that: this week, like last, I have one book that made it through the lines. As usual, I haven't read it -- but here's what I can tell you about it anyway:

The Kill Order is a prequel to the bestselling near-future YA dystopia (and series-starter) The Maze Runner, by the indefatigable James Dashner. This one seems to be the explanation of how the entire world went to hell -- somehow, "sun flares" lead to "a disease of rage and lunacy" (I'm faintly surprised that it's not more clearly the zombie apocalypse), and two young people, one male and one female, must race through the collapsing world to save themselves and whatever else they can. People more familiar with the series than I am may be able to tell if "Mark and Trina" become the founders of the evil dystopian society of Maze Runner, or if they founded the Secret Redoubt of Free People, or something else in the middle. But they're the central characters here, and so this is yet another book for people who like reading about all of their friends, neighbors, family, and co-workers dying horribly and painfully in a global apocalypse.

(You might guess that I find those people to have disturbing -- one might use more clinical terms, if one was so inclined -- tendencies, but fiction is fiction, and life is life, so I won't do more than cast mild aspersions at them.)